


maybe home is somewhere i’m going and never have been before

by lavenderseaslug



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003), Holby City
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-07
Updated: 2017-01-07
Packaged: 2018-09-15 12:13:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9234551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lavenderseaslug/pseuds/lavenderseaslug
Summary: [Battlestar Galactica AU - Spoilers through the end of BSG]She remembers the good. She remembers the bad. She remembers it all. A tentative handshake, a truce between President Serena Campbell and Commander Berenice Wolfe. A tenuous bridge between the two halves of the fleet, the two leaders finding common ground.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Boy, I dunno. It started with "what if there was a BSG AU with Bernie and Serena" and turned into this.
> 
> Title from a poem by Warsan Shire

_What I am living for and what I am dying for are the same question._

__Margaret Atwood__  

 

i.

_She remembers the good._

A tentative handshake, a truce between President Serena Campbell and Commander Berenice Wolfe. “We need to start having babies,” greeted with a wry smile. A tenuous bridge between the two halves of the fleet, the two leaders finding common ground.

They share books - to be fair, Bernie (as she’s implored Serena to call her) is the one who shares, and Serena does her best not to hoard them. Every book is a link to the life that they left behind, a memory of a past when there was time to create art and literature.

They dance as the fleet celebrates Colonial Day, pretending as though things are fine. Serena thinks of past celebrations on Caprica, of drinking with her sisters, their heads bent towards each other as they size up the men on the dancefloor. And as Serena lets Bernie lead her around the room, she can almost imagine she’s at home with her sisters, that they’re watching her dance with a woman and laughing about what they’ve always known about their older sister.

Bernie rescues her on Kobol, kind eyes soft with concern. They reach another truce, forge a closer friendship. They have to be honest with each other because there’s no one else they can trust. Serena is wrapped in someone’s army jacket and tries to shut out the horrors of the new life she’s been living.

There’s a ship named in Serena’s honor. She can’t help feeling giddy, flirting with everyone all at once as she pretends she’s going to smash the bottle against the side of the stealth fighter. Bernie looks relieved that Serena is there, standing with all of them. Serena tells herself it’s just the relief of one friend for another.

Bernie kisses her, soft and sweet, a thank you, a blessing. Serena forgets how feeble she is for a moment because she’s made this wonderful, resilient woman feel powerful again. “Admiral Berenice Wolfe,” Serena says, her parting gift to this old soldier, and Bernie’s lips tilt in a smile.

She gets better. Her cancer is gone, it’s a miracle. Serena catches Bernie staring at her sometimes, as though she can’t believe her luck. They have more time together. Serena wishes it took more than her dying to get Bernie to kiss her.

They talk on the comms, late into the night. Serena hopes the CIC doesn’t listen in. She yells at Bernie, trying to coax her out of bed, but they both laugh too hard for there to be any bite to her words. This is happiness, Serena thinks. She could live with this for the rest of her life. Bernie’s voice, warm in her ear, and humanity traveling through the stars.

Serena has to fight for her presidency, has to win over her people’s trust again. She doesn’t mind, she thinks she’ll win. She still feels nervous, and Bernie finds her in her quarters, mumbling words and sifting through white sheets of paper. They tear up the cards and snap pencils in two. Bernie laughs, loud and strange, like a goose honking, and Serena thinks it might be the closest she’ll get to hearing a bird call for the rest of her life. She loses the debate, loses the election, but thinks she might have won another prize, when Bernie comes to visit her on New Caprica. Serena is freer, without the heavy weight of public expectancy on her shoulders. Bernie still carries the weight of the world.

They smoke New Caprican leaf, and Bernie sings to Serena under the stars, low and husky and off-key. Serena laughs, runs her hands through Bernie’s hair, untidy curls, now that there’s less of a need for military precision. Serena holds that night in her memories during the long, cold winter, tells herself that Bernie will come back to her, and isn’t the least bit surprised when she finally does. 

She is president again, but it’s different now. She is president and Bernie is an Admiral and they don’t bother to pretend like New Caprica was an aberration. They are more open with each other, she thinks. Bernie came back for her, and Serena will always be grateful. There’s a boxing match, and Bernie fights too hard, but tells Serena it’s what the fleet needs, so Serena watches her soldier take a beating, and helps her back to her quarters.

They sleep together, and she wonders why they waited so long. Bernie’s body wrapped around hers feels like coming home, and she’s never slept so well, humming her contentment. Bernie will never leave her again, Serena knows this to be true.

She leads her people to Earth. That’s what Serena Campbell wants to be remembered for. She has found a new world, and she knows she’ll leave it much too soon. She flies over the lush fields of their new home, with Bernie’s hand over hers and thinks of only the good.

 

ii.

 _She remembers the bad_.

She has cancer, can barely breathe for thinking of the cells inside her, eating away at her vitality. She gasps for air, and pulls at her shirt, feeling everything so intensely.

Then the message comes through the comms and she thinks of explosions on her home world, of her sisters, her mother’s grave, her nephew. Things she will never see again. Her hand trembles as she takes the oath of office, quelling those thoughts because this has to be more important than her grief.

She buries her grief. Buries some of her humanity, too. She cannot be Serena Campbell, she must be President Campbell, and there is a difference. She builds a wall around herself that cannot be moved, because who would trust a president who’s dying.

She sneaks chamalla, hides her horror at the visions she sees - snakes writhing on her hands. She pretends she doesn’t live in terror that she’s the person meant to find a home for humanity. It all seems too much, and she doesn’t have much time left.

Bernie talks of hope and it’s all Serena can do not to bark out a derisive laugh. Serena watched her mother die from cancer, and can’t feel much hope that the she’ll avoid the same fate. Bernie reads to her in sickbay, but Serena can’t even hear the words as she feels the doloxan course through her body. 

Even when she is healed, miraculously, she cannot shake the feeling that her cancer is waiting for her, biding its time. She no longer trusts her body, and sometimes barely trusts her mind. She walks a precarious balance, and feels that if she teeters either way, she will go insane.

When she loses the election, she feels relief, though it is tinged with regret and anger. She was her worst self, she tried to steal the results, tried to sway the votes in her favor. But Bernie, moral and upright Bernie, stops her, and the disappointment in Bernie’s eyes stays with Serena longer than the loss of the election.

She lacks a purpose when she is not president. She has forgotten how to be a human. She tries to return to her original profession, tries to help the doctors in the med tents, but she is out of practice and things have changed. They keep her changing bandages and washing wounds. The work of a medical student. She pretends she isn’t chagrined by this change in status.

Bernie leaves her on New Caprica, leaves her to the cold and the Cylons and the death that clings to them on this rock. She bitterly thinks of when she asked if she could join Bernie on Galactica, only to be told that the people needed to see her on the planet. Even though she wasn’t president any longer, she still had to be some sort of rallying figure.

When they are rescued from the planet, Serena tries to find it in her to trust Bernie. Outwardly, she does. They must present a united front, after all. But she thinks of being left behind, of the horrors she endured. She spent time in a prison, a thin jumpsuit the only thing shielding her from winter, her name the only thing shielding her from more vigorous abuse. She doesn’t tell Bernie this, just says she’s glad to be back home.

And her cancer comes back. Serena knew it was there all along. She succumbs to doloxan, to the strands of her short brown hair falling from her head. She wraps scarves around her bare scalp, hides the marks from her IV with sweatshirts borrowed from Bernie. She runs endless laps around Galactica because there’s nothing else she can do. She’s dying.

There’s a planet that was Earth and now it isn’t. Just a grey planet with no life left. Serena finds a tiny sprout in the tired dirt and thinks that she is the same as the plant - a small, defiant thing trying to find purchase in a world that would happily spit her out.

They fight with the Cylons. She’s the voice of a resistance - again. She uses up her strength to send a message to her people, and feels like it might not be enough. She tastes the bitterness in her mouth like blood, and tries to remember what it felt like to hope.

They find a new Earth and she can’t even enjoy it. She tries not to ruin it, hiding her resentment behind a soft smile. She can feel Bernie watching her carefully, but only looks out the window to see the last view she’ll ever know.

 

iii.

_She remembers her past._

Outer space, stars and nebulas and black holes, were never something she longed to see. In her former life, where she was just a lowly government official, she never looked up to see the sun or the moon, never counted the stars at night. It’s around her always now. She finds friendly constellations, looks for patterns when she can’t fall asleep.

She thinks of the former president. Of locking the door to his office, of being backed against the door, of being intoxicated with his kisses. That Serena seems like such a different person now, a whole lifetime ago. She thinks more about Bernie’s wry smiles and hard-won handshakes than anybody else these days.

She misses her old office - she used to work in medicine, used to sew people up and heal them. She liked the color of her walls and the paintings she hung on them. She liked that she knew all her patients. The nurses would come to her for help, her staff were her family. Then she met the mayor and he asked her join his campaign, told her that she could be Secretary of Health. He opened a new world to her and she leapt at the chance. She didn’t know this is where it would lead her, and she doesn’t know if she would do it again.

There’s no point in dwelling on anything in the past, Serena thinks, but sometimes on the long nights, with only the hum of Colonial One to keep her company, it’s all she can think of. Her whiteboard gleams in the moonlight, the number, written starkly in black, a reminder of what’s been lost. Humanity’s numbers can fit on a small white square, and it dwindles every day.

She thinks of the library she’ll never visit again, of all the books she’ll never read. She savors every page in the books Bernie lends her - gives her. “Never lend books” was one of the first olive branches the gruff military commander held out. She reads more slowly now, never knowing what book will be her last.

She tries not to think of her family, because they don’t exist any more. She has to think of it in those harsh terms or else she finds herself thinking about Jason rounding the corner of her new office, complaining about the lack of networked computers. She visits her mother’s grave in her mind, is sorry she didn’t see it one last time before she boarded the ship to the Galactica. She’d told herself it would be there tomorrow, not knowing tomorrow wasn’t real.

She has made herself a new family. Bernie, and her son. Her assistant. The people she sees every day. She greets them with warm smiles and tells herself that this is enough. She is their mother, their aunt, their sister. Humanity sees in her every woman that they miss, and it is a heavy burden on her shoulders.

Earth was a myth, in her past. Now it seems an improbable dream, but one that they are hurtling inexorably towards. Serena remembers the stories of a beautiful planet that they all came from. The lords of Kobol would guide them there some day. Serena wryly thinks that someday has arrived more quickly than even the gods could have planned for. She wonders if the gods knew what they were getting into when they labeled Serena the leader to bring the people to Earth.

Though her bones are weary, her body so tired of living, she tries to keep the hopeful spirit of the young doctor she once was, thinks she still has the job of healing people, but that it’s taken a different form now.

 

iv.

_She remembers her future._

Chamalla extract takes her on adventures and wild rides. It makes her see things and hear things and feel things. Serena doesn’t like being out of control, but she’d rather that than doloxan any day. She knows that doloxan grinds a person down, keeps them firmly in a hospital bed, with no chance of escape.

Chamalla lets her see the future, visions she replays in her head time and time again. She sees Earth, bright and new, waiting for them. She sees where the water meets the land, sees the faces of the people she’s lost. She sees Bernie, tired and sad, behind her. Because Bernie hasn’t crossed over, not yet. And Bernie will be waiting for Serena, when she comes back.

Her future doesn’t seem bright, but it seems important. She doesn’t know if she can change anything she sees. Her priest, also a vision, implores her to love someone and Serena thinks that somewhere along the way, she hid that part of herself too.

Serena sees Bernie bending over her hospital bed, a future she hopes will not come to pass. Bernie’s head is bowed, tears dripping from her face, and she places a well-worn ring on Serena’s limp hand. _Love something!_ her brain shouts and Serena knows that Bernie is her future. It seems unfair that their future together should be so short, but Serena tells herself that’s no reason not to try.

Serena thinks of the constellations she saw on Kobol, eerie and bright, a signpost to her future. Whether brought about by some ancient magic or from her sickness, she doesn’t know. But she knows it has led her to this.

Parsing out hidden messages and symbols isn’t what she’s good at. Serena never read the holy scrolls, she depends on the priest to tell her what matters. The priest who tells her she isn't crazy, whose belief has kept Serena strong. When the walls of her prison cell close in on her, Serena can’t tell if it’s the drugs, or their withdrawal that is making her mumble words of scripture and visions of the future. She can see the worried faces of the people around her, but thinks that if only they would listen harder, they would understand her.

She saves a life, thinks she’s earning humanity’s right to survive, because that’s how calculated she’s become. Instead, she’s left alone, with not even a ghost to keep her company, as the Cylon ship limps towards home, towards Bernie. Bernie, who has only ever wanted to give Serena the world, who seems to think Serena deserves it all.

It’s strange to think that she can _remember_ her future, when it hasn’t happened yet, but that is also not the strangest thing to happen to her. She has seen her future in stops and starts, out of order and rearranged. But her future always includes Bernie, always includes Earth, and that’s enough of an assurance for her.

Serena doesn’t fear the future, no matter how her life ends - how can she? If she feared the future she was creating, then what’s the point of it all? She instead can only work tirelessly, endlessly, to ensure that the future of humanity is better than it’s past. No one can save the world but her.

 

v.

_She remembers it all._

Her world ended, and then it ended again. And from the ashes of the world, she became something new. Perhaps there was something more in the name of the stealth fighter. Serena Campbell, a phoenix rising.

Her world ended, but then it began again. She met a soldier, whose heart was as sore and heavy as hers. She found Bernie, scrabbling towards her, groping in the darkness, finding this lighthouse, this beacon of love in the middle of everything.

Her world began again, she rebuilt it brick by brick. She trusted herself, she trusted her Admiral. They built a world for humanity, kept them going as they sailed the skies, the blackness of outer space hugging them close.

And her world ended once more. She became frail and weak, tired and hardened. She retreated. But Bernie pulled her back, pulled her up. She took her shots, had poison running through her veins, had Bernie’s hand in hers at every turn.

A world found them, bright and green. There’s so much life, there’s hardly room for Serena. Her eyes look out over water and fields, whizzing below them as Bernie flies them across the landscape. She has lived so many lives, built so many homes. She thinks she has found one where she will stay, forever. She thinks Bernie will build them a cabin, with an easterly view. She always liked to see the sun rise.


End file.
